Chapter 4 : You are her legacy

I didn’t ask for this.

Not the glowing temple, not the echoing voice of a celestial being, and certainly not a seven-meter-tall snake goddess standing in front of me, squinting as if trying to see through my skin.

She sniffed the air like a beast. Correction. She was a beast. Just, you know, divine. Scaled tail coiled around stone pillars, hair that shimmered between green and gold like autumn leaves dipped in venom, and eyes—those eyes. Vertical slits, the kind that judged you before you even said a word. I already lost in that staring contest.

“You carry her scent,” she hissed, not in anger, but something far more unsettling.

“You mean… like perfume?” I asked.

“No. I smell her inside you. My daughter’s will lingers…”

Right.

This was the moment any rational person would ask, “Who’s your daughter?” and “Why is she lingering in me?”—but me? I was more concerned that I was still half-naked, covered in mud, and talking to a divine snake-dragon hybrid after being yeeted from a hero party like yesterday’s trash.

I was definitely not built for this.

---

Flashback a few hours: I tamed a snake.

Not just any snake. A weird one. Tiny, red-eyed, and affectionate in a way that made me uncomfortable. It kept curling around my wrist like it thought I was some kind of branch. It didn’t want to leave.

Which, to be fair, made it my only friend at this point.

I named it Nemea. No idea why. Just felt right.

She—the goddess, not the snake—glanced at the serpent on my wrist. Nemea didn’t flinch. If anything, it looked at her like a child greeting its mother. That earned me another stare from the towering woman whose tail could probably snap my spine in half with a flick.

“What is your name, child?”

Child. She just called me “child.” That stung.

“…Kira.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Kira.”

Okay. Now she was repeating it like it was familiar.

“You are her legacy,” she said, slithering closer. “I can smell it in your blood. You reek of her courage… and her failure.”

Great. Even goddesses use passive-aggressive insults now.

---

My mind raced for something to say. Anything to anchor myself.

“What do you mean… her?”

“The one who once stood where you stand,” she murmured. “A girl who defied divinity. My daughter—half god, half mortal. The first beast whisperer. The only one who dared to love a dragon.”

That shut me up.

Because, for a moment, something stirred. A memory? A dream? A flash of warmth and scales and laughter under moonlight. It made no sense. I had never known any gods or half-gods or girls with divine blood. I grew up in a farming village where the most divine thing was the price of carrots during harvest season.

“I… don’t know anything about that.”

“You will,” she said.

Because of course she said that. That’s how cryptic divine exposition works. You don’t get answers. You get breadcrumbs. Tiny, snake-shaped breadcrumbs that coil around your fate like vines on a forgotten tomb.

---

Athenra circled me now, slowly, like a judge examining a criminal. The air shifted as she moved. It was warm—no, hot—but not unpleasant. Like standing near a forge just before the fire flares. Magic pulsed in the walls. My skin felt tight.

“You came to die, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Not… exactly. Just kinda lost my job.”

She blinked.

“I got kicked out of the Hero Party.”

“…The Hero Party?” Her voice curled with disbelief and venom. “The mortals chosen to slay the Demon King?”

“Yeah. Them.”

Her laugh—oh god, her laugh—rattled the ceiling. Like thunder and hissing mixed together.

“You, cast aside. And yet here you stand, alive.”

I didn’t reply. Didn’t need to. The shame was thick in my throat. Rein’s voice still rang in my ears. ‘You’re useless.’ ‘You can’t tame even a goblin dog.’ They were probably celebrating without me. Probably already replaced me with a shinier, more compliant tamer.

Athenra knelt suddenly, eye-level now. Her breath smelled like wild herbs and scorched stone.

“I saw your heart in battle,” she said. “You did not run. Even when faced with death.”

“I… didn’t know what else to do.”

“That is the answer. Mortal instinct is cowardice. But you stood your ground for a creature no one else would value. That is not weakness. That is power most sacred.”

Why did that sound like praise?

“You don’t know who you are yet,” she said softly. “But you will. When the time comes.”

A clawed finger touched my chest.

And the world burned.

---

I didn’t black out. Not fully. But I wish I had.

Fire—no, something older than fire—rushed into my veins. My back arched, mouth open in a silent scream. Nemea glowed on my wrist, scales turning silver-blue for a moment. Symbols I didn’t recognize flared in the air.

It felt like I was being rewritten. Like someone cracked open my bones and poured stardust into them. Every memory I had trembled under the weight of something ancient waking up inside me.

Athenra was singing.

Not in words. In language I couldn’t understand. Snake-song. Dragon-lullaby. It coiled through my soul and seared itself into every part of me.

And then—silence.

I collapsed, gasping. The world returned in muted colors.

“You are her legacy,” she whispered again, this time with something like reverence.

“Whose…?”

She touched my cheek. “You will know when you face her shadow.”

“Face who?”

No answer.

Of course not.

Gods were allergic to giving straight answers. I was half-convinced that divine beings graduated from the “Cryptic Foreshadowing University of Narrative Tension.”

---

I left the temple at dawn.

Nemea had grown slightly. She now slithered up my arm and rested across my shoulder like a scaly scarf. Her eyes were brighter. I felt different. Stronger. But not just in the body. The air felt slower around me, like I could see danger before it happened. I could feel things. Emotions from nearby beasts. The rustle of rabbits in the underbrush. The sleepy breath of something big stirring in a cave far, far away.

I wasn’t just a beast tamer anymore.

I was something else.

And somewhere in the distance, the Hero Party laughed around a campfire, believing I was nothing.

I smiled without warmth.

They were going to learn.

One mother at a time.